A good friend of mine whose son plays for PC told me they lost their pitching coach to Furman. That in itself is not the big news, but what Furman is doing to make a commitment to baseball is and the reason why the coach left.

According to the coach and my friend's contacts, the new president at Furman [from Yale's athletic department] is declaring that Furman will become the "Rice University of baseball in the east". A small private school that has a higher tuition than most neighboring schools, Furman is similar to Rice except for the amount of money available from affluent alumni that Rice can call upon in the Houston area and around the country. Also reminds me of what Stetson has done with their program and look where they are now.

Furman's new committment is as follows: all 11.7 schollies will now be fully funded, increase the operating budget by $100K, and annnounce a new $1 million indoor facility dedicated to baseball.

My friend says it may take 2 or 3 years, but look for Furman to become a major player in not only the Southern Conference, but also in the Southeast. Like Wofford and PC, Furman has a lot to offer a player who is a good student and a talented player looking for option other than the other state schools. This is a bold move by their administration and I'm only posting it to show that it takes this kind of commitiment to make a program a contender year in year out. Most of you know that this kind of funding really makes a difference to the quality of your pitching staff when you can level the playing field with the other schools and match their offers.

I posted the fact about Furman being fully funded in 2 years last spring. It is true. I wish Wofford would do the same. Instead I bet Wofford keeps hiding the fact this the program is badly underfunded. When others hear how low we are they are actually impressed at how well Wofford does.

Lawdog, that was my understanding. Furman received a huge donation, and the money has filtered down to the athletic department and into the various athletic programs. The baseball program seems to have been given a substantial amount.

Unfortunately no. Some players are coming on academic money and at least one (likely AZ pitcher) is coming on the baseball money left over from pitcher who left in mid-January last year. We did graduate eight players (6 seniors and 2 listed as juniors) and were one player under 35 man limit last season so we had nine spots to fill. Maybe some of those players had small scholarships. Plus the school likes geographic diversity so those out-of-staters get a little more help if academically qualified. Overall the coach has become very adept at recruiting players who can qualify for other types of funds and/or whose family can afford tuition. We are still limited by less than 5 full schollys - way behind the furples and everyone else in the SOCON except Davidson.